Atmospheric propagation heterogeneities revealed by ERS-1 interferometry

Spaceborne Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) repeat-pass interferometry is a technique based on the exploitation of the interference pattern of two SAR images acquired in similar geometric conditions, at two different dates. This measure contains geometric, atmospheric, topographic and land-deformation information. In this paper we focus on the atmospheric information. First, we show theoretically that an adequate processing is sufficient to remove homogeneous atmospheric effects and that heterogeneities, as tropospheric turbulences, rain falls and ionospheric phenomena can be detected with SAR interferometry. Then, we interpret several observations and we present interferometric images of cumulus and, turbulences due to relief. SAR interferometry could be a new remote sensing tool for the study of tropospheric turbulences at a high horizontal resolution (40 m).